thoughts from an HR newbie

Randoms

“There are two types of speakers. Those who get nervous and those who are liars.”

Did you know that surveys about our fears commonly show fear of public speaking at the top of the list. Our fear of standing up in front of a group and talking is so great that we fear it more than death, in surveys at least.. 🙂

This fear is most of the time caused by some form of social anxiety. Actually it has all started in the past when people were constantly under the threat of being killed by animals and they had to collaborate with each other in order to protect themselves. In other words they had to belong to a group. My observations are that very often people try to tell that they don’t care if someone likes them or not or if they belong to a certain group or that they are not hurt when a group does not accept them well and that they prefer to be on their own. In fact, humans are social animals and we constantly need and have to be part of a group and to be accepted. Otherwise, we won’t exist. What happens when it comes to the fear of public speaking is actually the fact that we are afraid of rejection. We are afraid of not being well accepted and afraid of being left alone to handle things on our own. Just like in the past – we are afraid that we would have to fight with the animals alone.

Why you need presentation skills and public speaking skills?
Trust me, it will be part of almost every well-paid and challenging job. Really, want it or not! People are presenting to their colleagues on different topics and problems all the time! Therefore, if you want to be good at your job, you should absolutely possess these skills! Besides, if you want to “sell yourself” to a future employer, it will DEFINITELY matter. That’s why I always encourage people to constantly develop their presentation/public speaking skills! To me, it is a skill you should practise all the time, whenever, wherever possible! And you should never stop learning! But don’t expect to be perfect – there is always something that you can do better. Even the best presenters and speakers in the world never stop learning and trying to make their presentation as good as possible.

As I am sitting in a hotel room in the beautiful city of Kharkiv, Ukraine watching my boyfriend, Boris (blog|twitter) , preparing to take part in a conference tomorrow, I can do nothing but ask myself and ask YOU:”Do you really know what you want to do with your life?”

As long as for me – yes! I am absolutely sure. I hate it when people tell me: “Oh my Gosh, you are crazy to do this at such young age, you should not go to work, you should not read all day, you should drink, have fun all the time, go to parties, you should not care what will happen. You will work for the rest of your life.” And I’m like “What? Are you kidding me. This is not a job, it’s even more entertaining than going out and being stuck in a crowded, smelly night club”

I have always thought that most of the students these days waste their time instead of doing what they want to do for the rest of their lives. STOP wasting time thinking about drinking. STOP wasting time laying in bed all day. STOP wasting time looking for women or men on the internet. STOP WASTING YOUR TIME – IT IS MORE VALUABLE THAN YOU THINK!!!

Instead, do what you want to do and if you don’t know what to do – then imagine the way you want to spend every day for the rest of your life and put your head into action, time flies fast! 🙂

A lot has been going on lately! Really! 🙂 I did not have much time during the past few weeks because I spend most of my time at university..Even now! Did you know that studying in the library is six times more effective than studying at home? I may say it’s true..

I have already written about my feelings towards paying a lot of money for education. I am against it. Simply because it does not guarantee you anything. That’s why I decided to stay in Bulgaria and not to waste thousands of euros in another country. However, I already talked about that it in one of my previous posts – Education is an investment but not a guarantee.

Currently, I study Psychology at New Bulgarian University and I have to admit it – I adore it! 🙂 Even though I want to work in the sphere of Human Resources, the studies in the field of Psychology are really useful and supplementing. I have to say it, though – I, like most of my colleagues, had a tooooootally different idea of what Psychology actually was. It is way more harder than I expected and way more challenging for me. I have started to sharpen my analyzation skills, to work on serious cases and to learn about inretesting facts about the human mind and behaviour. However, most of my friends ask me if I know what they think… And I’m like “”Heeey, I study Psychlogy, not thelepathy!” Being a psychologist is not ONLY about spending time talking to people, analyzing their behaviour and making them talk about their dreams while laying on a couch. It involves experiments, research papers, hypothesis, criticism, etc..

So far, I haven’t spent a minute regretting my decision because most of the time I feel happy, fulfilled and inspired by what I do.

At the begginnig of June I wrote that I was part of Nestlé Bulgaria and honestly I was really thrilled that at the age of 18 without being a college graduate, I was able to apply for an internship and actually get it in a world-known company. As a person who is a constant seeker, it was one of the best decisions that I have made in my entire life! I had the chance to work in a totally professional environment surrounded by people who share values and work as a team. And the truth is – it surpassed all my expectations! 🙂 Continue reading →

During my first week at Nestlé we were told that we should start working on a project and mine is called “Let’s rideshare!” It only suports the idea and mission of Nestlé to be a leader in safety, health and environment and can be a very useful thing for all the employees.

I find it quite hard to describe my excitement over the fact that today I was offered the internship I applied for a month ago in the HR department of Nestlé Bulgaria!!! 🙂 I will be part of Nestlé Summer Academy and July the 1st will be my first day! Literally, one of my biggest dreams came true – at the age of 18 to have the opportunity to prove myself in one of the biggest companies in the world! 🙂 I will keep my blog updated on what my responsibilities will be. 🙂 I can’t wait, I am even so excited while writing this down and I am thrilled and to learn new stuff and to see how the business works and how different things are from the books that I’ve read!

I can’t believe school is over! I am no more a highschool student! 😦 Fortunately, I am absolutely done with all the exams (got straight “A”s everywhere! Yey!) and I can officially announce that from October the 1st I will study Psychology in Bachelors degree in New Bulgarian University together with Business Administration. 🙂 I am so happy that I made this choice to stay in Bulgaria for this particular moment because I can see how many opportunities I have in front of me and all I can say for now is… The best is yet to come! 🙂 🙂

I haven’t been quite active these days but I am busy with the graduation, the school-leaving and other stuff. (My mom keeps on saying me “You just have to do it, deal with it!”) But I caaaaan’t! I always find something more useful to distract me. Like the courses at COURSERA or my favourite book so far “The HR answer book” by Shawn Smith, J.D., & Rebecca Mazin (I strongly recommend it to beginners.)

Anyways, my English teacher Tatiana Rostovtseva who is a Fulbright grantee in Pernik made it possible for me and my classmates to participate in a Speech and Debate competition held at American University in Bulgaria on the 12th and 13th of April. Almost 20 people from my school were involved in diverse disciplines, including poetry, prose, debate, duet and original oratory. I am so thankful that we had the chance to be at this event because this competition was a challenging experience and a good opportunity to practice our public speaking and argumentation skills. I chose the Original Oratory because I find it a great opportunity to see how I’m going to react and behave in front of people that I’ve never even met before. Due to the fact that I’ve never made serious presentations I think it was a very useful experience because I plan to start a presentation skills course this summer. The requirements were to talk about a topic of significance or a threatening danger for 7 minutes and 30 seconds. There were different topics concerning diverse subjects such as vegetarians, social awkwardness, school as a better place, discrimination, appearance, etc.

However, my topic of discussion was: Education is an investment but not a guarantee. I already wrote about it on my blog and it was something familiar but still something that I am passionate about. For the past few days I worked really hard on the speech and I tried to find mistakes that I’m making, I talked to strangers to see their reactions and so on. Although I was extremely nervous, I made it to finals which really meant a lot, I talked in front of different judges and students and was able to see their performances. The good part was that I managed to learn from the others and I found things to avoid during my future presentations. For example, learning the speech by heart. Fortunately, I never do this, I’d rather improvise in some situations, it’s more natural. What’s more, some of the participants did not connect with the public and it felt like they did not feel comfortable and did not actually believe in what they were taking about. That’s why I found some of the speeches interesting as an idea but poorly presented. 😦

I believe we all did it really well considering the fact that this was the first Speech and Debate tournament we are attending. We won 2nd place for our school and had so much fun although the two days were really exhausting and busy. But most importantly, we made our teacher really proud!!! 🙂

Although I won 2nd place, to me this experience was a win-win because I saw where I was wrong, what not to do, what to do more and I was able to learn from the mistakes of others. My highest moment of the whole tournament was when one of the judges, who I think was also a professor at the American University in Bulgaria, saw me at the hallway and told me “I am so sorry that you won’t be here in the fall!!” This really meant A LOT to me!!! I will never forget it because It made me believe that he saw what I was talking about and I couldn’t have asked for a better recognition of my work!! 🙂

I haven’t been quite active on Twitter and on my blog but unfortunately, I have a French exam approaching (I am terrified BTW) and also I am swamped with tons of other work. However, couple of days ago I read a blog post by Scott Berkun concerning college degrees and how they are an investment but not a guarantee. Scott presents couple of things you should learn in real life and how university can provide some of them. What made an impression to me is that he says “But of course there are other ways to get them.” And after thinking a little bit I have to say that I totally agree.

What made me write this is the upcoming event at school which is something like a “week of career consulting”. I really started thinking about my future and the career path I will take on. Three years ago I decided to study Psychology in university. But my true desire is to become a Human Resource Manager because I think that my urge to help people present at their best, my business knowledge which I am constantly expanding and my inborn tendency to deal with diverse people make a perfect combination for this job. I think I have finally found my true passion! 🙂 And now the time has come, I am applying to university after couple of months and I am two-minded about going to France and staying here, in Bulgaria. I truly wanted to go and study in the UK and to make a living there but since the college fees are £9,000 I am not ready to make SUCH an investment because it’s not even certain that I will have a return of that investment. Therefore my two options are France and Bulgaria. In France the money spent for a year are about €8,000 and in Bulgaria less than €3,000.

BUT! What I have to mention is the fact that probably two months ago I started learning things only on the Internet, found interesting videos and webinars, HR related blogs and so many more! By using the social medias, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and my blog in a more effective and useful way I got to know so many people who work in the field of the Human Resource Management and this really helped me to move forward very quickly! Well, trust me, it definitely made a difference! And this keeps me motivated! 🙂 That made me really think – is it worth to make such a great investment to be under a pressure the first year, to deal with everything on my own and in the end eventually not to get what I want when I could do it almost by myself with a little help from the university?.. Of course, the chances not to succeed here are also that big but the investment is almost 3 times smaller. If I start counting the positive and the negative aspects of studying abroad I will get even more confused…Studying abroad has its benefits but also its drawbacks. It makes you stronger though, it teaches you how to struggle. But more importantly, it is a big investment whose return is not guaranteed…

So all the holidays are gone. We survived the end of the world. It’s 2013!..It looks like something new is about to start…

My winter brake is over, I have to be at school later this day and I want to share with you that this winter brake turned out to be a very efficient and productive one. I finally started using the Google Reader properly! 😀 Anyways, I have never believed that I am going to say what I am about to say but writing in my blog starts to feel like something right and of great importance. Since I started following couple of HR blogs, I realised that the social media and most importantly, the blog is a place where you can learn and share ideas.

I have only one wish for 2013-to be healthy in order to keep learning and moving forward! I’ve never been more motivated! 🙂